News Releases

The University of Virginia today announced the creation of a permanent endowment to support student scholarships that could reach $300 million through a combination of philanthropic support and the UVA Strategic Investment Fund.

Earnings from the new Bicentennial Scholars Fund will provide need- and merit-based scholarships for University undergraduate students, and also will relieve pressure on long-term tuition increases by funding need-based aid from this fund instead of from tuition revenue.

The Board of Visitors on Friday approved new research-related investments from the University of Virginia’s Strategic Investment Fund, including $17 million toward a cross-disciplinary effort to end childhood diabetes, led by the School of Medicine.

The board also approved four other project proposals, bringing the total of this round of investment funding to approximately $29 million.

Among the University of Virginia Office for Diversity and Equity’s many efforts to cultivate and promote diversity on Grounds is administering the annual John T. Casteen III Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award. The honor recognizes a student, faculty or staff member who has demonstrated a deep commitment to diversity in the UVA community.

Nominations are due March 3 by 5 p.m. A luncheon to honor the recipient will be held March 31 in Alumni Hall’s Jefferson Room.

The University of Virginia and its Darden School of Business have entered into an innovative solar power partnership with Dominion Virginia Power. The agreement, announced Friday, positions UVA to achieve key sustainability targets, while further expanding Dominion’s renewable energy initiatives.

Students watch as pieces of glitter float furiously around inside a recently shaken jar. The glitter, their teacher tells them, is akin to their emotions; after being provoked, if they wait and give it time, the glittery chaos inside the jar will eventually settle and calm will be restored.

Less than two years after graduating from the University of Virginia, Vincent Ning and Michael Paris already have a year of experience at Microsoft under their belts and have just launched a start-up that’s been accepted into Y Combinator, one of the world’s hottest entrepreneurial accelerators.

The Center for Open Science, directed by University of Virginia psychology professor Brian Nosek, has launched three new services to more quickly share research data as the center continues its mission to press for openness, integrity and reproducibility of scientific research.

Typically, researchers send preprint manuscripts detailing their research findings to peer-reviewed academic journals, such as Nature and Science. The review process can take months or even years before publication – if the research is published at all.

A new study illustrates the University of Virginia’s substantial role as an economic powerhouse contributing to local, regional and state economies.

The independent economic impact study found that UVA’s Academic Division, its Health System and the College at Wise combine to generate $5.9 billion annually in economic activity for the Commonwealth of Virginia. UVA’s 2016-17 operating budget is $3.2 billion.

Even before graduating from his Ph.D. program in August, Eric Chyn earned widespread acclaim for research that, according to its coverage in The New York Times, “could fundamentally reshape national housing policy.”

Chyn, who will start in January as an assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Economics, wanted to learn more about how living in public housing impacts a child’s income and employment over his or her lifetime.

Better classroom instruction is one answer to reducing the racial discipline gap, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia, Rutgers University and University of British Columbia.

The finding, reported in the current issue of School Psychology Review, has important implications for addressing one of the most alarming and persistent trends occurring in high school classrooms across the country – that African-American students are typically disciplined, suspended and expelled at much higher rates than adolescents from other racial backgrounds.

University of Virginia chemistry department chair W. Dean Harman says his goal as a chemist, teacher and departmental leader is to “make a difference in people’s lives.”

That difference could be through the development of chemical compounds that ease the symptoms of disease. Or it could be by helping students realize their potential for making meaningful discoveries. Or it may be through administrative actions that help the Department of Chemistry excel.

On Dec. 7, 1941, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes tore through the silence of a clear Hawaii morning, raining bombs and bullets down on Pearl Harbor’s unsuspecting servicemen and bringing the United States into World War II.

Seventy-five years later, activists nationwide, including University of Virginia students and faculty members, are still working to research and memorialize the soldiers killed that day.

As Iraqi forces battle to reclaim the city of Mosul from the Islamic State, refugee camps in northern Iraq are swelling with civilians fleeing the fight. These internally displaced people are joining crowds of Syrian refugees who have also taken up residence there. This blended community is one of many housing the now 65 million people who have been displaced by violent conflict around the world.

The University of Virginia and Dominion Virginia Power on Tuesday inaugurated two rooftop-mounted solar arrays on Grounds with a ribbon-cutting ceremony before an audience of more than 100 people at Newcomb Hall.

The solar panel systems – one atop Ruffner Hall and the other at the University Bookstore – include 1,589 solar panels, approximately 3-by-5 feet each. Together these systems will produce 364 kilowatts of electricity at peak output, enough to power about 91 homes. The electricity will go directly into the local power grid.

Even as the University of Virginia Medical Center begins a nearly $400 million expansion to its emergency room and adds six stories of state-of-the-art private patient rooms, timeless lessons from a now-crumbling, largely shuttered 19th-century hospital just two hours to the north remain relevant.

So says UVA nursing doctoral student Elizabeth Hundt, who’s spent the last year studying the nation’s first federal psychiatric facility, constructed on a 185-acre farm overlooking the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., for her dissertation.

About 40 local residents joined design consultants, University of Virginia representatives and students Friday night to consider ideas about what a memorial to the enslaved African-American workers who helped build and maintain the University might convey.

The idea of a memorial to UVA’s enslaved laborers has gained momentum and support over the past several years. It was built into the mission of the President’s Commission on Slavery and the University, which President Teresa A. Sullivan established three years ago.

When you think about religious teaching, you might not think about farming, debates on immigration or gun control, or conducting firsthand interviews with both civil rights leaders and notorious Klansmen.

He was well enough physically, but his driver’s license had been suspended and his personal debts, which included more than $1,000 in traffic fines, mounted. The court didn’t have a repayment plan that he could afford. Then he became seriously ill, and he fell into homelessness.

Not only were the Rotunda and the Academical Village lit up Thursday night during the University of Virginia’s 16th annual Lighting of the Lawn ceremony, but so were the faces of the thousands of students, faculty, staff and community members who gathered in the cold to observe the tradition.